By TUNBOSUN OGUNDARE

The Federal Government will on Monday, October 5, give out two brand new Hyundai cars as a gift to the best teachers one in public and the other in private schools nationwide.

It will also reward the best two schools with a bus each and also give the best teacher in each of the 774 local government areas of the country with a various gift.

The chief executive\ registrar of the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Professor ‘Segun Ajiboye, gave this hint in an exclusive interview with Tribune Online.

He said the federal government came up with the initiative as a way of rewarding hard work and encouraging healthy competition among school teachers in both public and private sectors.

He added that the gesture would also boost teachers’ morale and consequently lead to education and economic development of the country.

He said the awards would be given out to the intending recipients during this year’s World Teachers’ Day celebration on Monday, October 5 in Abuja, the federal capital territory.

When asked to assess teachers and teaching profession in Nigeria 60 years after independence, he said both teachers and teaching profession were of high standards at independence up to 1990 when the Structural Adjustment Programme was introduced by the military government of the period.

“That is when the government began to owe teachers salaries for many months and many of them began to leave the profession and those who remained were taking an additional job to augment their income for survival,” he recalled.

Prof Ajiboye explained that things began to change for better with the establishment of TRCN by the federal government in 2004 to regulate the practice of the teaching profession in the country.

He said the idea was to revitalise the profession and ensure it is no longer an all-comers affair.

He said the initiative is yielding tremendous results such that the majority of teachers in the country today are professionally certified.

“And where we are going is that no non-professional will be allowed to stand before students in any government-approved schools to teach anywhere in the country,” he stressed.

He, however, urged all employers of teachers in both public and private schools and also the teachers themselves to ensure they always live up to their respective responsibilities so as to move to jointly move the education sector to greater heights. (Saturday Tribune)